Sabbatean Messianism as Proto Secularism

M. Avrum Ehrlich

Gershom Scholem tried to answer the question why, from the many tens of messianic sects emerging and then fizzling out amongst Jewish communities, the messiahship of Sabetay Sevi did not remain a local phenomenon but reverberated for many centuries to follow and spread so widely throughout the Jewish world. In his analysis Scholem attributed the cause primarily to the role played by the students of Jewish mystics living in 16th century Safed. Safed was home to many Jewish immigrants from all over the Jewish world, including Sephardic Jewsand those from neighbouring Damascus and Egypt as well as from Russia, Poland and the Ottoman Empire. Most interesting were those Spanish and Portuguese Jews exiled after the expulsion of 1492 and the communities of Marrano Jews returning to Judaism, some making their way to Safed and Jerusalem. The diverse nature and input of these people into the Safed community was in itself unprecedented in the previous thousand years previous and perhaps it was this that contributed to two fascinating phenomena occurring there within the space of 50 years. The first was the attempt by Rabbi Jacob Berab and his school to renew the Sanhedrin (political messianism) and the second was the rapid development of Kabbalistic teaching and its dissemination (mystical messianism). for full article